B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Recent
50%
50% -- source uniqueness rate for AI search engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini) (2025-09)
More than 50% of the domains/sources cited by each AI search engine are completely unique and exclusive to that engine alone.
- Study analyzed queries across select verticals (automotive, consumer electronics)
- Outputs analyzed rather than underlying search algorithms
Attribution:
View source
Lighthouse Research Team
Last verified:
·
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Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
50%
Unit
Percentage
Data Vintage
2025-09
Entity
Sample Size
5,000
Geography
North America
Evidence Quality
B
Strong, reliable evidence
Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.
Single source - not yet corroborated
Score breakdown
Extraction
75
Source Trust
60
Citation Chain
20
Independence
30
Methodology
45
Freshness
95
Source
University of Toronto
Primary
Tier B
https://westoperators.com/blog/toronto-research-sep-2025 ↗
Source Article
The search visibility gap: What 5,000 queries reveal about AI versus Google | West Operators
A study that changes how we think about search
Researchers at the University of Toronto ran thousands of queries through ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google. Same questions, wildly different answers. Not the content of the answers, but where they pulled their information from. In Septemb…
Original Research
University of Toronto
· Original study ↗
Methodology
University of Toronto study running 5,000 queries across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google; report titled 'Generative Engine Optimization: How to Dominate AI Search'
Methodology documented
Segmentation
IndustryAI
RegionNorth America
RoleAll marketers
Channelsearch
Cite this stat
Plain Text
AI search engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini): 50% source uniqueness rate. Source: University of Toronto (2025-09). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/ai-search-unique-sources-toronto-2025
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<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/ai-search-unique-sources-toronto-2025" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>50%</strong> -- source uniqueness rate for AI search engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini)<br><small>Source: University of Toronto (2025-09) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/ai-search-unique-sources-toronto-2025" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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